


Faith In Their Hands Shall Snap In Two

by gentle_herald



Category: Henry IV - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare
Genre: Despite This Historical Accuracy Is Nearly Zilch, Eton, Gen, Mental Illness, Period-Typical Homophobia, Wild AU, i did research
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 19:28:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11653167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentle_herald/pseuds/gentle_herald
Summary: If the Troubles had taken place in Wales not Northern Ireland, if Henry IV had been Prime Minister instead of Margaret Thatcher, and if Harry Percy and Harry Lancaster had been at Eton together, English history might have looked a little like this.





	Faith In Their Hands Shall Snap In Two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cheshireArcher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshireArcher/gifts).



> Title from Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas.

It's raining, a heavy grey curtain that reminds Hotspur of Northumberland. He looks out his window over the black shingled rooves with their odd exhaust pipes and the medieval brickwork, dark with the damp. It's a familiar, comforting view, laced with memories of his first two years in this room here at Eton, a time full of discovery and easy, joyful rising.

It was amazing how far a willing heart and an eagerness to please could get a man; including into a lot of fights. Harry Percy's - Hotspur’s - wild idealism rubbed the school cynics the wrong way. It made him instant, natural enemies with Harry Lancaster, called Hal.

The first time Hotspur heard Hal boasting about cheating, he jumped on him. Hal fought flippantly, letting Hotspur win so easily it was humiliating. Hotspur looked like a brute for fighting a passive boy. It must have hurt, but Hal never acknowledged it. What he did, however, was set his rapidly growing band of admirers on Hotspur.

A basic part of Hotspur revolted at anyone purposely dumbing themselves down, refusing to work hard or even care about something beyond themselves. Hotspur fought almost weekly for the first few months until Hal's followers tired of getting a rise out of him. Hal's followers were always getting tired of things: any sort of school work, games, School Chapel.

Hotspur loved rugby with all his thirteen-year-old heart, so when stern Vernon pulled him aside and informed him that his spot on the side was conditional on sportsmanlike behavior, he was shaken. That was the first time Hotspur understood the allure of doing what was asked of him. Safe in the armour of someone else's moral justification, he didn't need to fight Hal. Hal's emptiness would bear no fruit, he was confident. Vernon respected him and Hotspur was more than willing to wait for Hal to dig his own grave; to drift futilely into the dark.

And so Hotspur gave flailing at other boys. Succeeding did the same thing as fighting: prove Hal wrong.

 

  
It is known that the Percies have Welsh sympathies; that they are connected to the Mortimers, whose Welsh sympathies are a now-open secret. Hotspur is allowed to return to Eton, but warily; his House Tutor valiantly and transparently tries to ignore the controversy. He fails and summons Hotspur to his study.

It's a delicate conversation to speak of treason as-yet unacted upon; of the suspected sins of a father. Mr Blunt makes Hotspur tea, then prods him awkwardly about patriotism and one's conscience. Finding nothing but an embarrassed young man who nods at the right moments and stares at his hands, his House Tutor lets him go.

 

  
The Very Rev. Dr. Arundel, formerly of Archbishop of Canterbury and now in his age and wisdom Headmaster of Eton College is, Hotspur reflects, a vile man.

He is Hal's father's friend. That alone is enough, since Hal's father is the one keeping a chokehold on Wales and driving the economy into the ground. Arundel has supported him all the way, cracking down on contrary political opinions in the Church and throwing vitriol at the miners and rebels from the pulpit. He makes the Church of England Bolingbroke's personal fan club and worse. How many clergy have been ruined because he pried into who they shagged? Even when they hated themselves for it already. Even when they killed themselves, he went after more and more – the bastard.

Arundel hates anyone who's not from the South of England. He doesn't have a single compassionate bone in his body and now he stands up in chapel on Armistice Day and preaches about The Love That Makes Undaunted The Final Sacrifice. Love of Eton, love of duty, love thy neighbour, love of king and country.

Is this school stupid or evil? wonders Hotspur. The masters spout nonsense about how there is "no I in team" while the boys get hammered and jostle for a spot in Pop. It raises most of us to be blindly loyal like oxen and a few to be megalomaniac tribal dictators. It raised cannon fodder for the war they're mythologizing and generals to throw men's lives away. And politicians to start the war in the first place. Arundel drones about Another Country Most Dear to Those Who Know. Apparently young men who died blindly in the mud are crusading heroes of the true faith.

Oh, God. He's tying the sermon into Wales. "We are called to carry their torch in our age, to preserve the Nation when sedition threatens," pronounces Arundel, to a wave of nods. Across the aisle, Hal looks smug. Of course he would: the headmaster is propping up his father's government and when he finally cleans up his life he'll fall straight into parliament along with half the sociopaths in this school. The other half are power trippers on their way to the army to bully their subordinates like they do the smaller boys here.

There's a fine crack running up the checkered pavement at the foot of the altar. Hotspur stares at it to keep from breaking under the sheer hypocrisy and cruelty being flung around so lightly. It grows under his scrutiny, sending out roots and branches and tendrils through his brain. Eton, the CCF, rank, Kate, Hal, Bolingbroke, Arundel, the desire for approval – the cracks run through all of them like they're made of plaster of Paris. Things he cared for fall to pieces and the crack moves on, looking for other victims.

Hotspur is left empty, sitting in Chapel and wondering what relation the pinched, grey man in choir dress at the pulpit and the manipulative values he preaches could possibly have to the rest of the world. Even anger is silent now, leaving exhaustion in its place.

The organ pounds out I Vow to Thee My Country and the school roars along. He picks his way up the gravel path, into his House, up the warped stairs to his room with the poster of Che Guevara on the wall and sits slumped on his bed, staring blankly. He could go downstairs and call Father, Douglas, even Glyn Dwr. He desperately wants to but he won't; there's nothing to say.

 

  
For so long, Glyn Dwr was a bogeyman and Wales a maze of no-go zones and treasonous violence that gave mandatory Combined Cadet Force exercises an edge of excitement and relevance. Now Hotspur is in the back of a Land Rover, looking out at the green, cloud-shadowed hills. Living, mysterious hills. Dylan Thomas' hills, Douglas exclaims from the front passenger seat. It's not a place to fear; it's a place to love in a way Eton once inspired love.

They're on their way to officially join Glyn Dwr, and all the rebel territory is open to them. The Land Rover passes fortified checkpoint after checkpoint, weaving deeper into the mountains. Hotspur can see how easy it is to fight a guerilla war here. He also sees the miners out of work, the poverty, the brutal effects of the Welsh Penal Laws. This is all confirmation of what Uncle Thomas understood first, when he approached Father about Glyn Dwr's rebellion. Wales deserves its chance at self-determination and Henry Lancaster deserves to be dragged from Downing Street and shot.

 

  
At Harlech, as Glyn Dwr’s guest, Father prays before meals. "Give us the grace to follow your will, Lord, never straying from the path You lay before us."

Hotspur twists his napkin into a rope until it digs into his fingers. He hates passive aggressive prayers: they always feel like a criticism aimed directly at him. Any mention of obedience and duty carries the shadow implication that he is basically willful and wrong.

Again, he keeps respectfully quiet. He seems to be doing an uncharacteristic lot of that recently, or maybe its that, for the first time, he is biting down what he wants to say with no consolation. At Eton, he was dutiful because it was easy and brought results. Now, every time Hotspur forces himself into the good son's role less and less of the boy who naively fought for approval remains. Father and Uncle Thomas and Mortimer might see a young man growing in wisdom and right conduct, but there is an increasingly irrational, furious void underneath. Each time he bows his head wears away a little more of the meaning behind the act; only a bitter husk remains of what Hotspur once revered.

Hal is out there somewhere; Eton is out there somewhere, inaccessible now. It isn't only that Welsh violence is heating up and spilling over into the rest of England and that the Percies and Mortimers are known to be the ringleaders. It's the huge, screaming gap between the deal that Vernon made with him in F Block: work hard, play by the rules, keep your head down and you will succeed, and Hal Lancaster's trickery. He can't commit his soul to a place that let a moral-less slacker turn on a dime in the sixth form and become Head Boy, and he can't do anything without committing his soul to it.

Now people look at him and see that he's only seventeen, not that he is a full Master Warrant Officer, a rugby captain, a star rower. These things only matter at Eton, he's learning from their harsh dismissals, and when you reject Eton all your work there disappears. Father and Uncle Thomas and Glyn Dwr can't agree whether he should be allowed to join a paramilitary, to do what he sacrificed his reputation at Eton for.

He will do anything to be taken seriously.

 

  
His steady girlfriend Kate Mortimer is insufferably kind and curious. He wants nothing less to explain how Eton poisoned him; how Hal poisoned it for him; how he is trapped here. Better to move, fight, push his body until his mind shuts down. He can't have that, so he snaps at Kate and rolls to face the wall.

Motion or paralysis. His ability to think and respond as expected of him has frozen. He's too angry and self-pitying to wish it back.

Kate turns away and slowly goes downstairs. That doesn't matter. Nothing about people matters anymore, just the freedom to do what he's suppressed for so long: fight for what he believes in, not wait quietly and rely on others' fickle goodness.

 

  
Glyn Dwr walks out of talks with British officials, who won't even speak to Father. There is no going back now: both men are angry enough to make a change.

Kate cries as Hotspur packs what little he'll take with him when he leaves to lead a paramilitary: a Browning semi-automatic, rough clothes, boots. She pulls him back as he flings his pack into the Land Rover's boot. Hotspur is terrified she'll cry or tell him to be careful – what he's doing has nothing to do with lovely girls left at home. It's about going, moving, acting at long last. Heaven knows he's already sacrificed enough to earn this.

"Marry me when you come back?" She whispers, and Hotspur breaks away, running the three steps to the cab, leaping in, slamming the door.

"Go," he tells Douglas, and they roar away. In that moment Hotspur cares nothing for Kate, for Mother or Father or Uncle Thomas, to whom he should be grateful for convincing Father to let him go. He stares hard at the pale grey trees and the rising sun, stonily ignoring any guilt.

Driving towards Shropshire, into the hotly contested Marches, Douglas says, "What'll we find there?" Neither of them know.

 

  
The prisoners are kept in a basement on Homeldon Street, disarmed and tied hand and foot. It won't hold them long, but they don't need to be kept long. If the hostage swap doesn't come through by Sunday, they die.

The officer cadet sent to bargain for them is so obviously unprepared, so prissy and vacuous that Hotspur won't give him a reply. It's clear whoever commands these Army troops doesn't fear him enough to send a proper negotiating team. When Hotspur's done, he will.

“Fag,” Hotspur screams, gripping the messenger by the arm, lifting him and throwing him out the door so he loses his balance and falls in the street. Hotspur closes the door and leans against it, taking great heaving gasps of air.

The officer in charge is Hal, he learns after interrogating a likely-looking captive. He left Eton right after it was clear Hotspur joined the rebels, and he has since demonstrated remarkable alacrity in cleaning up his life.

It's just like Hal to designate himself Hotspur's official nemesis. Well, if that's how he wants it...

Hotspur stands in the seeping basement feeling life closing in around him. There is a terrible sense of encirclement, of being outwitted, but he'll fight his way out. This time, there are no adults to hobble him.

He stalks back into the dim, humid kitchen, glaring at the men who draw breath to speak; to question his judgment, to ask what the messenger had to say. They shift in their chairs and glance at each other for reassurance. Hotspur is in command here, but he knows the others don't trust him. This unstable young lord's son is probably the worst man to lead them. But they are still here, and Hal is outside with the British Army. Hotspur will have to be enough.

"They're going to storm the compound," he chokes out, words still losing themselves between his brain and mouth. "Tomorrow we get them before they can get us."

 

  
The battle goes wrong almost immediately. The rebels don't have time to spread out in houses and hidey holes before the Army starts with the firebombs and machine guns. Part of the compound goes up in flames, and Hotspur watches men scramble for cover and fall, shot.

That's not where the machine gun fire was aimed. There are snipers on the rooves.

Hal steps out into the street. Hotspur has heard that he has joined the Military Reaction Force; that he wears plain clothes and lets his subordinates call him by his first name to escape suspicion. That the MRF is an elite hit squad, killing rebel leaders on sight and that the regular Army would never have taken Hal because he’s so young, but that his age doesn't matter because he's a brutally effective field commander.

He's doubted all the rumors until now. Partly it's a desire to preserve some part of his life at Eton as mere child's play; not every school bully needs to become a murderer. Maybe Hal wasn't as bad as he thought at the time; maybe the world is not irretrievably broken. Partly, Hotspur hasn't wanted to admit to himself that Hal really is worth something; that he is talented enough to justify years of sloth.

  
Hal steps out into the street, covered. The left side of his face is a bloody wreck, but he's still upright, eyes clear and focused, steady on his feet. Hotspur is hidden close enough to see the white of his exposed cheekbone.

He steps out, some reciprocal damage half planned. Take a knight, lose a knight. Like chess. He just needs to see Hal, see him bleed. Wound him himself.

Hal doesn't move, letting Hotspur cover the distance between them. He resents that fiercely, that clever little flip of the power. Once again, Hal has used some small inaction to humiliate him. Hotspur will not let himself be made vassal. He throws himself on Hal, bringing him crashing to the ground, head cracking against the pavement.

Hal lies in the street with a bullet in his face. He's the culmination and centerpoint of everything Hotspur hates, of what has ruined his idyllic life, shattered his peace and certainty. If Hotspur lives through this, he will never be able to reclaim the small boy who was so smitten with Eton, with duty and innocence. At least it was a good rugby tackle. There won't be any others now.

Hotspur, lying on top of Hal, can't think of a way he would be allowed to stand up and retreat. England doesn't want political prisoners. It wants the rebels dead. Especially their Percy leaders.

This has never been about strategy anyways. It's the one thing Glyn Dwr and Uncle Thomas and Father asked of him that he couldn't deliver. Let them cope with their son's death. Let them take the consequences of pushing me too hard.

Hal is utterly still. He doesn't even look worried, though his face is bleeding out and his implacable enemy is sitting on his chest. He has risen easily above all of us who worked so hard, becoming an untouchable prince.

Hotspur goes for his semi-automatic. Three snipers fire at once, but Hal never flinches as Hotspur is knocked off him by the force of the shot.

**Author's Note:**

> And death shall have no dominion.  
> Dead man naked they shall be one  
> With the man in the wind and the west moon;  
> When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,  
> They shall have stars at elbow and foot;  
> Though they go mad they shall be sane,  
> Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;  
> Though lovers be lost love shall not;  
> And death shall have no dominion. 
> 
> And death shall have no dominion.  
> Under the windings of the sea  
> They lying long shall not die windily;  
> Twisting on racks when sinews give way,  
> Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;  
> Faith in their hands shall snap in two,  
> And the unicorn evils run them through;  
> Split all ends up they shan't crack;  
> And death shall have no dominion. 
> 
> And death shall have no dominion.  
> No more may gulls cry at their ears  
> Or waves break loud on the seashores;  
> Where blew a flower may a flower no more  
> Lift its head to the blows of the rain;  
> Though they be mad and dead as nails,  
> Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;  
> Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,  
> And death shall have no dominion.
> 
> Dylan Thomas


End file.
